The Great Famine
The magazine opposed the provision of aid to the Irish during the Great Famine. The Economist argued for laissez-faire policies, in which self-sufficiency, anti-protectionism and free trade, not food aid, were in the opinion of the magazine the key to helping the Irish live through the famine which killed approximately one million people.
Read more about this topic: The Economist Editorial Stance
Famous quotes containing the word famine:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)